Chapter 109 - On the Third Day

September, 2002

Sephiroth wants it to not be true.

He stands and stares at the impossibility in the paperwork. It could not be true. The printed reports have multiplied over the table he's taken over in the library. The text inside them doesn't change no matter how many times he reads them. The words that have been written remain the same.

Sephiroth wants them all to change.

His throat is dry. He swallows. The roll of his own throat is rough. Blinking, he looks up towards the other side of the room and his eyes struggle to adjust. He's been reading too long. The raggedness of his own breath makes him put a hand on the table. He should leave but it is impossible. These papers have pinned him into this like a specimen on a table.

At first, none of it made sense.

The reports and folders contained nonsense. Sephiroth believed it was nothing but a fool's misunderstanding. Genesis must have come down here. He must have discovered these reports. He must have read a few things and decided to make conjunctions. Sephiroth is seeing Genesis' connections only because he is primed to. His mind is influenced by a degraded cognitive drivel.

It's easy.

It's too easy.

It's too dismissive.

Sephiroth's mind rejects it. He can't accept it. Project S is printed on folders that are thin with age. A true hoax could not pull this trick. Jenova, although written JENOVA, is everywhere. Familiar names dot the reports. It sticks into him like a splinter deep into his thumb. It is relentlessly irritating. There is a truth here.

The folder is stamped 1991.

The report is between Mariella and Hojo. Mariella's name is scattered in these reports. She's everywhere. This he has justified without too much thought. If there is any truth to these documents, this would make sense. She had been his primary doctor. She had the power to trap him in Midgar after he was captured by Wutai. She should be here, if he wants her to be or not.

The line that cuts through this reasoning of his mind is simple.

I want him for later.

Hojo's words are printed. Five words connected together into a meaning he does not want to think about.

A few paragraphs later Sephiroth's stomach drops as Hojo explains himself further in the transcript.

There will be a chance. He continues to age. The mako is not an easy substance. How long do you think he will last? We will forcibly retire him right after the degradation or permanent damage affects his performance. SOLDIER won't have any use for a broken toy. Then we have a limited window before mother JENOVA kills him off entirely.

The cage.

This is about the cage.

He is referencing the cage that Hojo had shown him just a handful of days ago.

It was determined eleven years ago that his fate was to be caged and experimented on before he dies of whatever curse his mother has given him. Sephiroth had been in high school at the time. He hadn't killed his first man and they had decided that he would become a broken toy. Even more so, he would become a toy that they intended to break from use. Even the idea of degradation had been considered.

Before these papers had been like a fantasy that he was waiting to disprove so he could leave. They had no connection with his actual life. "Project S" and "Project J" read untethered from reality.

Now Hojo's smile comes to him, his fingers spread against the tablet that had shown Sephiroth the life that he could have had.

It sinks into him.

These papers could hold his truth and he has been too ignorant to understand it.

Mariella would have known about this. She had been part of this conversation. Her responses are recorded. His future was known to her for years. His fingers creep down to his stomach to press against the slow release capsule in his side. It connected. This was her way of freeing him. She had forced another choice. Mariella's words about him wanting to leave slip back over him.

She had meant something more.

She wasn't referencing starting over.

She was referencing escaping.

This could be real.

It becomes a nightmare as he starts to pull binded books. A life narrated in scientific observations is shaped in a way that feels more and more tangible. His fingers skim over the blood and younger years that he knows he can't remember. It isn't useful. He can't verify it. The shelves curl throughout his life chronologically. As he starts to scan the spines, he realizes that these could all be about him.

He searches for things, in his later years, that he could verify with his own memory.

He doesn't want to find them.

The first "observational" report narrates a late night conversation with Rafi makes his lungs tighten.

The words of a dead Dinand's frustration at his lack of progress dreg back years of failure.

There are printed photos and paperclipped promotional images from his years promoting the enlistment.

He starts stacking all the reports that are bloodwork on a table until the pile heightens and spills over onto the floor. He had thought this amount of testing was normal or if only slightly abnormal.

When he was young, the system had started labeling the amount of mako running through his veins as "lethal" and that "immediate medical attention needed."

Yet.

They had done nothing. They only kept testing him to see if he would expire. The handwritten notes on the paper explain it.

And he'd lived.

Then they had exposed him more as an adult.

Sephiroth stills. His fingers shake in front of him. He's always understood that his life, his life as a child of two dead parents, was unusual but he did not understand this extent. Shinra had taken advantage of it. They had made it so he would never suspect. Without parents to watch over him, they had done whatever they wished.

Shinra had twisted his biology into the perfect SOLDIER after Wutai had started the process.

Zack Fair not only found him but returns to Sephiroth like a dog after a bone.

It's a shock to see another human being. The words Zacks says take moments to register. The sounds are unused in his ears.

The first time, Sephiroth is simply able to drive him away with the power of rank.

The second time, Zack brings him food, water and questions about what they should do while they wait for him. The sandwich remains untouched. Sephiroth is not hungry. The water tastes coppery.

This is also when Sephiroth finds out that days have passed in the world above. The reports from the books keep coming. He's losing himself to them. Everything printed about him is entering in the confusion of thoughts that Sephiroth can no longer differentiate.

The numbness has transformed into a void, endlessly drawing in the need for the answer to the question if Genesis was right.

He sinks into the story of Jenova.

"Sephiroth."

Genesis had said that she had been pulled from a rock. An impossibility. Nothing can be birthed by something frozen in time. It is not biologically possible.

"Sephiroth, come on."

Jenova was classified as an ancient and then alien life form. Her body is "humanoid enough" in appearance.

"Stop."

A hand knocks the book from his fingers. The reports inside are scattered from their binding as the book hits the ground. The papers cascade across the tile. Sephiroth stares at the emptiness of his hands. It is gone. The book has been removed. It comes to him, drifting into his sight, there is someone standing in front of him.

Sephiroth looks up to the eyes of Zack Fair and for once, they are showing something other than a giggling sense of amusement. They are colored with frustration and anger.

"Are you with me? Are you actually listening?" Zack asks.

Sephiroth blinks, almost fascinated with how his face moves and emotes so easily. How is he so confident in what he is feeling that he can wear it on his sleeve? Sephiroth shifts, a shoe sliding back and a cramp fires up his leg.

Zack stands on the other side of the table.

He puts his hands on the surface and leans forward, toward him. "No disrespect, but what the actual fuck are you doing here?"

"I-" Sephiroth's throat closes off unexpectedly.

"It's been three days and you've not moved from this room." Zack's voice rises. "I am worried. Cloud is worried. The whole town is confused. Are we even going to go after Genesis? I don't think that I can take him down on my own. I kinda don't even want to risk it if you are…going to keep at this."

His mind is caught backwards. Things that he has read registering in the daze.

"What are you even reading down here?"

Sephiroth had found a letter from Gast from the years that he could not remember. Everything I've done, I've done in your best interest. I sincerely hope as you travel your path, you will never have to understand me. I hope that as you grow, you never have to see the true devil behind the curtain and that you can remain who you are.

Zack pulls a book, getting to throw it across the room. The panic rises in Sephiroth. There is no need for that. There is no need for anyone else to know this.

"Stop."

Sephiroth's hand is locked around Zack's wrist. He's not sure how it got there. The glove warms with the contact. Zack's face sours and it takes very little for him to twist his hand out of his grip.

"Talk to me, Sephiroth."

"I-" Sephiroth's eyes lose focus.

A surveillance report records a conversation between Mariella and Orlin right after he was rescued from Wutai. Orlin had wanted Mariella to "save him" from Shinra. When she had refused, she told him to be Sephiroth's role model.

Orlin's response?

I don't want to be part of this horror show.

Sephiroth's life is a horror show. The date on the report is 1984. Sephiroth was a child, just pulled from Wutai in Orlin's arms.

Orlin thought that he was a horror. He had become Sephiroth's friend out of obligation. All those smiles were false. He didn't care for him. It was a Shinra directive until it was a habit or he felt too guilty to try to stop.

Zack has concern in his voice. "You haven't eaten. You have just been down here. We're on a mission. Genesis is out there somewhere-"

"I want to be alone."

There are exposure reports from his later years. Mariella had mentioned once that a First exposure is two sessions at eight hours each. Sephiroth had been exposed to hundreds of hours of mako before he stopped counting on hours on the reports. No human would be able to withstand that exposure to the planet.

Did he know what could withstand that amount of mako?

"Yeah, I get that but we're here too. You can't just abandon us." Zack is moving around the table. He is going to get close.

A monster could live through that amount of exposure.

"Then go away." Sephiroth hears the rise in his own voice.

"We can't."

Sephiroth looks away at the papers at the desk and a childhood that he doesn't remember.

"I release you from the mission. Go home."

It comes in a casual throwaway line in a recorded email from Mariella that hurts the most.

Zack laughs. "Come on. That's so dumb. Don't say that."

Sephiroth's heart beats hard.

"I don't want you here."

At one point, Sephiroth's life had been in danger for reasons that he had yet to understand. The solution was simple. SOLDIER had been his savior. That is why he had been pushed towards such a goal. He would live because he had continued to be of use to Shinra.

"Sephiroth, please, I don't want to have to call Shinra for orders. Will you come back up?"

"Don't worry about me."

Here we are, Mariella had written, finally at the day where Sephiroth succeeds in the purpose that saved his life. The promise to Shinra is fulfilled. From here, we don't have to prove that we were right in saving him. I will no longer have to stand in front of the Board and justify the costs and numbers and then have them ask once again for the program to be shut down. Sephiroth will simply live.

He'll never have to know how close he was to being put down like a monster. I'm so proud of our First Class SOLDIER.

Sincerely, Mariella Haynes

A monster.

Mariella had called him a monster just like Genesis did.

It throbs in his head.

"Yeah, no. I'm worried about you."

The last person to worry about him was Angeal.

Sephiroth's focus snaps up and at the SOLDIER next to him.

"I need you to leave."

The threat makes Zack's eyebrows raise. "Yeah?"

The emotions pull Sephiroth's muscles tight and he takes a step closer to Zack. "Go."

Zack crosses his arms. "And what if I don't? You need to take care of yourself, Sephiroth. You need to eat. You need to leave this place."

Sephiroth's head pounds harder.

"You are not responsible for me. I am your commanding officer. I am ordering you to leave the mansion."

"I can't leave you alone. I need to take care of you as my commanding officer, man." Zack shakes his head and leans against the edge of the table. It's a practiced casual. The muscles in his arms are tense. Ready to go. Ready to fight.

"If you do not leave, I will forcibly remove you."

Zack stares at him. "Sephiroth. It isn't worth this. Whatever it is. It isn't worth it. Genesis is certifiably insane. You know that, right? You aren't a monster."

The quiet in the room stretches out. Zack says the thing that he wants to hear but he isn't the one that needs to say them. If it had been Angeal with his hand on Sephiroth's shoulder, he would have crumpled. Even Genesis could have knocked him in the head and told him to stop "being such an idiot" and it would have worked.

It's the only thing that he wants to hear but it can't come from the mouth of a child.

Zack shouldn't be here. He doesn't need to witness this. He doesn't need to see Sephiroth stumble through this.

Sephiroth summons Masamune without a second thought. She purrs in his head. The blade is a pale yellow in the lab lights. Now she shifts back into his mind, returning from shattering at the touch of the naked woman. The weapon is finally something familiar when everything is swirling. He knows what to do with her.

They could carve through flesh and bone together. They have done it before. They can do it again. She's the only constant inside his head.

Zack reacts immediately.

The SOLDIER doesn't engage. He steps back. His hand goes for his sword but he stops. His expression is wary, like he isn't sure if this threat is real. Zack's chest rises and falls evenly. It's a trick from Angeal, if Zack knows it or not. Regulating his breathing is to help him stay calm and steady.

He should lash out. He should attack him while he has the advantage. He doesn't.

Masamune glints in the light and Zack stands still. Something crumples in Sephiroth. He's not even a viable threat in his eyes.

"I am going to report to headquarters. I am going to ask them for orders," Zack says in a even voice, "I am going to tell them about you. Maybe I can get you some help. Find out what this place is."

"They don't care about me, Zack. We're just tools." It's the lack of water that's making Sephiroth's voice go raw.

Zack's face remains still, uncharacteristically quiet.

"I'll be back, buddy."

And then he leaves him too.